Recently the Hartford Schools terminated their Director of Financial Management Joanna Laiscell after a prolonged suspension. The allegations against Laiscell, according to a termination letter sent by Hartford Superintendent of Schools Leslie Torres-Rodriguez The charges included fraudulently maintaining her ex husband on the Hartford Schools Health Insurance plan, you can read that letter below.
One of the more troubling aspects mentioned in the termination is the issue of the "320 dependents" that may be removed from the insurance plan as a result of the Audit.
If there are actually 320 people being insured by the Hartford Schools for health insurance they may not be entitled to, then why is Joanna Laiscell apparently the only target of the investigation. Why aren't the others being pursued or was it just an effort to remove Laiscell, for whatever reason the Superintendent wanted.
The audit report from the Forensic Auditors report seems not to mention anyone else other than Laiscell and the directive from the beginning seemed to only want to focus on Laiscell. Why? Is the money for the other 320 not important enough to look at?
If Laiscell was wrong, fine, she deserves whatever she gets, but can we really ignore any other potential wrongdoing? In the report below, it is clearly stated that their charge was "specific to Joanna Laiscell" and no one else was even looked at out of the 320 other alleged incidents.
More documents are pending under an FOI request and I am sure more layers of the onion will be peeled back soon
Forensic Accounting Services Report (1) by on Scribd
Termination Letter - Joanna Laiscell HPS 7-12-2018 by Kevin Brookman on Scribd
They can not pick and choose who to hold accountable in these matters.. Either its everyone with same consequence or they all get a pass. In fact if this is true and 320 others skate this woman has a case against the superintendent for being treated differently than her other 320 employees... SMH tired of all the nonsense and different standards....
ReplyDeleteIt's not unusual to do an audit of any health plan to see if people are on it that shouldn't be. Even the City does it. Most towns and private employers do it too, and more often than not, such an audit will find people on the plan that shouldn't be. People die, get divorced or otherwise separate which would be cause for removal from the plan, and the information is not reported. It could be that no family member exists or reports on the death of a plan participant, or a spouse doesn't inform the employer to remove an ex. It isn't always nefarious or incompetence.
ReplyDeleteSo if you get 319 other people fired, will you be satisfied?
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if this corruption is occurring in other city departments...
ReplyDeleteHealth Care fraud ??? Whoever heard that??? Thank you BOE for self righteous posturing. Screw them and their ‘teaching’. A bunch a lying half wit pukes. I’ll take the course ‘ economic self preservation through cannibalization of public funds’ please , “oh , it’s full and there is a waiting list?’ Somebody do something !!
ReplyDeleteHow many of Hartford’s BOE graduated from Dewey, Cheetem and Howe? Hello Luke, you gonna go after this gross mismanagement of City money or are they of like minds?
ReplyDeleteThey appear to have gone to great lengths and cost to get this lady out. the bigger question is why? The case was weak from the beginning. the good Dr Leslie knew this and that is why she hired a forsenic accountant to try and find something more. why? City internal audit wanted involvement and would have kept the process and investigation honest but the good Dr Leslie refused. Why? The good Dr Leslie not only wanted this lady gone but she wanted to embarrass her and ruin her credibility publicly. Why? The keeping files on her laptop? What they failed to mention was this is the board issued laptop provided to her for her work. Ask the IT division to show you how many people regularly use the network drives? If this was a terminal offense, most of central office should be terminated. Ask if the “important” budget and financials files referenced are housed in the district financial systems MUNIS and others? Ask for details as to which important files are claimed to be missing? The good Dr Leslie is sure working hard to convince the public that this lady risked a 22 year career earning six figures to defraud the district out the equivalent of one weeks pay for an ex husband? But yet everyone else that kept their ineligible dependents on the plan, 320, just simply forgot and get a pass? Didn’t they also get a 1095? Why different standards? They want us to believe this lady obstructed the audit by deleting a sentence in an email but fail to tell you she was part of the leadership team that recommended and pushed for the dependent audit in the first place. After all, wasn’t the audit recommended after finance leadership learned that a teacher reported that she kept her ex husband on the plan racking up over $1 million in claims? The same one the good Dr Leslie directed be “kept quiet”. Ask who wanted these and other similar matters the good Dr Leslie demanded be kept quiet brought to light and exposed and you may just be surprised at what you find. finally please ask, why did the good Dr Leslie recommend and hire a new Cfo with no experience in school or government finance over others that had many years experience at the height of its fiscal crisis? Distraction and deflection work only so long Dr Leslie.
ReplyDeleteAfter working for the HBOE for more than 25 years, I have never once been asked to complete a form updating any of my information concerning dependents. It's never been a requirement. Since my starting here I've actually had two husbands on my insurance policy and four children. This is the very first time i've ever heard of such a thing. Mr. Brookman, I'm not sure if you knew that this probe started a couple of days after Ms. Laiscell decided to apply for the CFO position. it seems as if Ms. Torres and her commanders didn't want Ms. Laiscell in this position of which she was qualified, having fulfilled it twice in the former CFO's absence. Mr Brookman just wanted to thank you for digging deeper into this. You're a good man. 9 time out of 10 people like Laiscell are used as a scapegoat to cover up the crimes of people like the Mayor and the Superitendent of Schools. It's always the same thing.
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ReplyDeleteHow many of Hartford’s BOE graduated from Dewey, Cheetem and Howe? Hello Luke, you gonna go after this gross mismanagement of City money or are they of like minds?
August 19, 2018 at 6:05 AM
I think it's more like Ripimoff, Cheetem, and Scroom.
Dig into Dr Leslie. She is incompetent,” leads “with fear and intimidation. Worst super of my thirty year career. For the good of the children, she must go. She’s no leader and a terrible role model for kids. In HPS, unprofesionalism rules at the top and in her cabinet.
ReplyDeleteIn the third bullet of her letter of termination, Leslie Torres-Rodriguez purposely omitted the material fact the laptop she referenced is a board of education issued laptop.
ReplyDeleteWhich specific policies prohibit board of education files to be stored on board of education computers and or laptops?
Which specific policies require that an employee store board of information files on multiple drives?
This letter suggest that Leslie is framing a false employment termination claim. I recommend that Joanna file a legal claim against Leslie personally,
File lawsuits against the board of educations.